


The Only Place

by Glacialis_Quasar



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Brainwashing, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Drabble, Gen, Memory Loss, Or the dealing with it, is also one that should go here, post the winter soldier, well past brainwashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 11:03:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1602848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glacialis_Quasar/pseuds/Glacialis_Quasar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's The Winter Soldier's mission... but he can't let him die and he can't let him drown. He can't begin to wonder why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Place

He knows him. It’s a stunning sense of déjà vu that confuses him and stops the punches. He knows those words, he knows this man. He knows… a little guy too dumb not to run away from a fight. Before he can think more the next explosion rocks the falling helicarrier and the man he knows-but-doesn’t is falling. Ingrained instinct is what has The Winter Soldier gripping a beam to spare him the same fate, it’s what he fights away to loosen those fingers so he plummets as well.

 

The Winter Soldier cannot finish his mission. He hits the water hard enough it should’ve driven the breath from his lungs. He holds on to that breath, looking under the water until he sees the slowly sinking form. He reaches and grabs, unsure why. He can’t let this mission drown. He can’t kill this man, but he cannot let him die either. So he drags him up to the shore and stops for a moment, staring down. “I _know_ you.” He moves away, aware that he’s deep in enemy territory and them catching him is _not_ an option.

 

But yet… is it enemy territory?

 

_“Then finish it, ‘cause I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”_

 

The words repeat unbidden in his mind, a gear frozen and catching with the same singular intensity The Soldier took to his missions.

 

Later, after he’s found some discarded clothing and replaced what he’s worn for as long as he can remember, he decides to go look at a Captain America Exhibit that he saw mention of. It’s… an odd feeling, knowing that he made the choice himself and it’s not an order – not a mission. No one bothers him as he enters, ingrained instinct making him aware of four different escape routes unguarded and two more that are the moment he looks around.

 

Something else has frozen to that catching gear, some place. _Brooklyn_.

 

And he sees it on one of the displays. Sees it and words come to his lips that he’s never said but he _knows_ them and it hurts in that place that every single moment of déjà vu hurts.

 

“Following that little guy from Brooklyn too dumb not to run away from a fight.”

 

His voice is raw, scratchy, the most he’s used it for recently was screaming at _him._ The Soldier – no… he likes the name Bucky. It feels right. He spends longer than he meant to at the exhibit, reading every placard and watching every looping video over and over until its closing time and a guard shuffles forward to inform him that he has to go.

 

He returns the next day as the museum opens because it’s the only place that feels right anymore and he doesn’t even know why.


End file.
